Ordo ab Chao

by Integral Archer

Chapter XIV: Adversus Solem ne Loquitor

“Barring Death or sufficient Proof of physical Incapacitation, the President shall be present to observe the Oath of his Successor.”

—Article XIV, Section XX of the Constitution of Meeting Tribes of Immediate Siblings

A dark plume of smoke, suffocatingly black and dense, rose from a large impact crater, which had a radius of nearly two hundred yards. The crater itself was partly obscured by the twisted and malformed skeleton of the colonnaded building that surrounded it; but, because the remains of the iconic sculptures and architectural decorations could still be made out against the soot and the ash, one could still tell that this phantom of a building was once the Hall of Congress.

Princess Celestia approached the podium in the field in front of this sight; and, unlike her ancestor, who had stood in that exact spot about one hundred fifty years ago, was greeted with a roaring crowd. Her adulators were the soldiers of the Army of the Friendship, the heroes of the Battle of Canterlot, who had pitched tents—so that they would not have missed their princess’s speech—in the grass that remained in the strip directly in front of the Hall of Congress and in the smaller, though no less black, craters that dotted the field in front of the big one.

The field, the street that ran through it, and the imperious craters that had torn up the foundations of both were completely filled with garbage, left there from the intense celebrations that had taken place without end for the past three days straight.

Princess Celestia had planned to give this speech when the celebrations had concluded, figuring that they deserved as much time as they needed; but, after three days, with no end to the festivities in sight, she reevaluated and assumed that the best time to present the information would be while they were still in high spirits. With a confident smile, she looked over the sea of ponies—some of them still wearing gray and red—and stood there for a few minutes, presumably seeing how loud the cheering could get before it would plateau.

When she thought she had enough, she raised her hoof calling for silence. Princess Luna’s heart fluttered anxiously when she saw that the noise did not die down promptly; it persisted for a few more moments before complying with her sister’s request, but not without impromptu whistles coming from a few individuals and assorted murmurings persisting throughout her entire speech.

Princess Luna stood behind her and, all these years later, was still in awe about how charismatic and how influential a public figure her sister was. She definitely had a way with words, being able to take any fact and, using a little bit of clever word choice and emotionally moving rhetoric, making it imply anything she wanted.

Among other things, she called the president a “misguided idealist” and claimed how all he had wanted was the best for all of them, even if it did not seem like it. Above all, she never identified him as the unequivocal enemy and instead kept talking about how they needed to resist “disharmony” among themselves. She said that the president had been unable to be located, and that they were still searching for him as she spoke.

Princess Luna’s eyes lit up when she heard the pivotal moment in her sister’s speech, how ingenious a method it was to implement a government which the COMTOIS warned about. Princess Celestia pointed to an obscure article in the COMTOIS: because the president could not be found to stand trial, nor could a body be found which would allow them to confirm him dead, no election would be held until one of these two conditions had been met; and, in that time, the vice president would act as head of state—and, coincidentally, fully endowed with the president’s war powers.

Princess Luna stood there and stomped her hooves on the ground with the rest of the crowd, although not for the same reason: they applauded at her moving words, while she applauded at the intricacy of her plan, how amazing it was that her sister somehow managed to destroy any meaning of the COMTOIS using the text of the COMTOIS itself.

In the meantime, Princess Celestia said that she—as leader of the official opposition—would help guide the country along to recovery in tandem with Princess Luna, who was acting in the president’s stead. She said that they, together, would act as assuredly and consistently as the sun and the moon does, moving as a unit along the sky as seeming polar opposites, when in reality complimenting each other so beautifully: the moon lighting the path along one side of the earth, when the sun attends to duties on the other side. She said that the roles that they were assuming were absolutely crucial in the upcoming era of reconstruction; it was as if they themselves were raising the sun and the moon on their own backs, each day, over Equestria.

* * *

From the way Princess Celestia delivered that speech, everypony listening to it thought that the war was over. Nopony had suspected that the Elements of Harmony had spent the last three days on a convoy en route to Manehattan: the last city still flying the flag of the United Republic of Equestria and where the federal soldiers, still stationed on top of assorted skyscrapers and corner stores—and who had not heard that the capital city had fallen—still held out against the hordes of the Army of the Friendship, who slowly, but surely, poured through the winding streets of the city, the Union Army firing down on them from all angles. Despite the fact that each and every soldier in the royal blue knew that the fall of the city was inevitable, they harkened back to the time when they had sworn to uphold the COMTOIS, and they loaded their rifles with their waning ammunition, determined to bring down as many traitors as they could before the city capitulated.

In a two-story Manehattan house, Wildflower Sherbert drew up the covers on her youngest foal and kissed him on the forehead. She looked over across the room and saw her other child, a teenager on the cusp of adulthood: she had rolled onto her side so that Wildflower could not see her face.

“Custard, are thou all right, dear?” Wildflower said to her foal from across the room.

“I’m fine, mom. Can you stop talking, please? I’m trying to sleep here,” Custard responded, with the insolence peculiar to adolescent fillies. She did not turn to face her mother as she said this.

Wildflower did not get mad, for she suspected that the remark had only been made to hide her fear; and when a shell landed not even fifty yards from the house, causing the room to shake and setting loose dust that sprinkled down onto the children’s beds, she could see a shudder run through Custard’s body, confirming her thoughts.

Wildflower opened her mouth to say something, but when she realized the words that would follow due to her mothering instinct would only break her teenager’s fragile ego, she closed her mouth and hoped that Custard knew what she meant to say.

“Mommy,” came a young voice, and Wildflower looked down at her son, his eyes wide open. “Can you bring me some earplugs? I’m scared of the bombs, and I can’t fall asleep.”

Wildflower sniffed, stepped back into a shadow so that he could not see her tears, and she said: “Mommy doesn’t have any earplugs, Wool, but she can get thee some tissue paper to put it thine ears instead. Would thou like that?”

Wool nodded, and Wildflower went across the room and grabbed a box of tissues. Swiftly, and assuredly, she pulled out two of them in front of her child and crumpled them up beneath her hooves. As she lowered the box, she pulled out a third one that he could not see.

“Hold thy head up, sweetie, so that mommy can put these in thine ears,” she said soothingly. The colt complied, and Wildflower pushed one and then the other into both of his ears, wiggling them left and right before they finally settled into place.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Good,” he said, and he snuggled down into his pillow and closed his eyes.

“Who’s my little sugar cube?” she asked, playfully.

“I am,” he giggled.

“Thou sure about that?” she asked rhetorically, as she playfully poked him in the ribs, which caused the colt to give a little squeal of glee.

Then, Wildflower leaned down, put her mouth close to his ear; and said in the magisterial voice of a parent, loudly enough so that Custard, across the room, could hear it too: “Now, listen very closely. You are to follow the same rules for tonight as you have for the past few nights. Stay in bed; and, no matter what you hear, no matter how loud it gets, do not come downstairs. You are not to leave your beds or this room until either I or your father come up here to tell you that it’s alright. Is that clear?”

“Yes, mom,” said the colt.

“Good. It’s up to thee to make sure that Custard follows these rules,” she said in a lighthearted voice—which caused the colt to let out a very forced giggle, strained as it was under a blanket of fear. “I’m going to leave, and I’m going to shut the door, and your father and I will be back very soon.”

She gave Wool another kiss on the forehead. Then, she stood up and made her way toward the door. She grabbed the handle with a hoof; and, before shutting it, she added: “Your father and I love you very much. No matter what happens, always remember that. Good night, my children, and I’ll wake you in the morning for breakfast.” And then she shut the door.

She stood outside the closed door of her children’s door, wiped the tears from her eyes from the third tissue she had pulled, and then promptly covered her mouth with it to muffle her cries.

Then, in an instant, as if a switch had flipped in her mind, her posture changed from one of a worried mother to that of the implacable soldier, willing to die before seeing the values she swore to protect come to harm.

She walked down the corridor, her boots thudding loudly against the floor, as if serving as an ominous warning to her enemies.

She reached the stairs and started down them. The stairs fed into the living room, and she saw her husband, a green earth-pony with a brown mane, sitting on an armchair.

In his mouth was a ramrod draped in a white cloth, and he was struggling with cleaning the badly fouled barrel of a Trottingham Rifle. His face was covered with black soot, and he grunted as he tried to force the rod down the barrel, pushing it as hard as he could. He heard the boot steps and looked up to his wife on the stairs. He gave her a nod, acknowledging her presence, but said nothing and continued with his work.

“Stompton, did thou clear out the bodies?” she said while coming down the stairs, no emotion in her voice.

“Yes,” he responded just as coldly. Then, he nodded in the direction opposite to the stairs. “They’re out back. I got a little bit of ammo off them, but not much.”

Wildflower reached the bottom of the stairs and picked up another rifle leaning against a book case next to a battered door. Nailed across the door, which had a gaping hole right through the top half of it, was four wooden planks; many nail holes around the arch of the door and sawdust scattered across the floor suggested that these were not the first barricades to be erected across it.

“The foals didn’t see thee, did they?” she said after a moment’s pause.

“I don’t think so,” he said back, not making eye contact with her.

Without harnessing the rifle around her body, she cleared the old percussion cap off of the rifle’s primer and then reached for a paper cartridge in a box on the bookshelf. She bit into it and said, her voice muffled by the paper: “How much do we have left?”

Stompton put his free forehoof into a box full of bullets, stirred them around, and cast a quick glance into it. “I’d say about sixty for the both of us.”

Wildflower spat out the paper and poured the gunpowder from the cartridge down the barrel. “Thirty each?” she replied. “That . . . that should be enough, I think.”

“Enough for what?” Stompton snapped, and he stood up and walked over to her, his eyebrows bent angularly downwards. Speaking through his teeth, he continued: “Enough for the fourth wave? What about the fifth wave, or the sixth? How long does this last? For how many more days must I spend my evenings dragging around the mangled bodies of the never-ending horde of intruders? When will I finally be able to say to my children, ‘Everything will be alright,’ and honestly believe it myself? How long are we obligated to stay our deaths?”

The sound of a volley of rifle-fire from seven blocks down the street flooded the interior of the house, and Stompton kept staring at Wildflower, using the sound along with his words to drive the point home.

“What are thou suggesting?” she asked.

“Let them in this time, and beg them to show mercy upon our family.”

“No,” Wildflower retorted immediately. “If I was in my last bunker, surrounded by my soldiers, and it was us against a truly superior army, we would only come out should a single soldier come in unarmed and carrying the white flag of parlay. He would ask for my surrender, and I should grant him it; because there is an honor in two soldiers sitting down at a table, speaking to each other as moral equals, even though not physical equals, and negotiating the terms of a surrender. But I have not seen such hospitality in those barbarians out there, and not one of them wishes to make peace. As such, I am morally obligated to defend myself and my family.”

“So that’s it, then,” he said, the rage now overflowing in his eyes, which manifested itself in tears. “The truth comes out: thou care nothing for our family, in itself. The only reason thou won’t negotiate is because thou fear a tarnished reputation.”

“How dare thou accuse me of neglecting my domestic duties, when, throughout my entire life, I’ve only done what I’ve thought was best for our family. I abandon my post, to come back to this lost city, and this is the thanks I get?”

“That’s how I see it, and thou won’t be able to change my mind.”

“Well, why don’t thou look at it this way: if thou are so certain that death is inevitable, despite the fact that we’ve laughed in its face even after it has sent dozens of its own assassins through that very front door, would thou rather see thy children remember thee as the guardian that stood in front of the horde of monsters with only a bayonet, throwing thyself at them with all thy might and fury, so that thy children remember thy last breath to be one of defiance, of which they take example, or would thou rather them see thee as the appeaser, who delivered them personally into the hooves of their killers?”

At this, they heard the animalistic battle cry of the rebellion coming down the street, firing their rifles madly in the air, about to try for the fourth time to take this house in this small neighborhood: the house that had not crumbled as if it were made of cards, unlike the rest of the ones that immediately surrounded it.

Stompton unclenched his teeth, and the muscles in his face relaxed. He stepped closer to her and, with a calm voice, said: “Please, Wildflower, listen to me: the more we kill them, the less likely they will show our children any mercy. I understand where thou are coming from—I really do—and if I was an officer in the Union Army, I couldn’t be prouder to call thee my general. But the foals up there”—and he gestured up the stairs—“are not soldiers, and this house is not a bunker. I think that both we and the rebels expect the other to brandish the white flag first. In thy bunker, the invading army enters with the white flag as a symbol of goodwill; but they’re expecting us, a household, to come out with the white flag, to admit we’re weaker. It has nothing to do with conventional warfare; our house is tactically insignificant and has no impact on the outcome of the war. All it has to do is with their egos, to know that they beat us, and nothing more. If that’s all they want, then I say we give it to them. If we admit we’re weaker, then maybe they’ll find no pleasure in adding insult to injury—and they’ll leave us alone.”

Wildflower closed her eyes, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. Stompton wiped them with the back of his hooves and then kissed her on the forehead. “We’re still in this together,” he whispered, “and nothing will ever change that.”

The old soldier opened her eyes and looked up at him in worship. She blinked, clearing her eyes, and wiped her nose with a forehoof, sniffing while doing so. “I’m tired of fighting,” she said wearily. “I just want it to stop.”

“Then let’s take the first step in doing so,” he replied affectionately. “Let’s take the moral high ground.”

She nodded and he held onto her a little while longer before gradually letting go. His departure was slowed down by Wildflower’s firm grasp upon his mane.

Stompton picked up his rifle and removed its ramrod. He then grabbed the off-white dishrag that he had been using to clean his rifle off the floor and tied it around one end of the ramrod. Then, he moved toward the barricaded door, after casting a loving glance back at Wildflower. As he worked on pulling the nails out of the boards, Wildflower heard the sound of the battle cry grow louder and louder; still, her husband pulled at the nails one by one, refusing to let their intimidation tactics interfere with his work.

At last, he pried the final nail out, and the boards fell to the ground. He kicked the broken door, and it gave way without much effort. The light of the moon shone down upon him as soon as he cleared the threshold of his fortress—unarmed, naked, vulnerable, and raising his ramrod to the approaching line.

Wildflower looked past him, and when she saw that the line had assumed the ready position, she cried out to Stompton—but it was too late. Even though she had heard the sound thousands of times, the report of a rifle volley never sounded more terrible to her. As she watched her husband fall upon the foot of his house’s doorstep, she dove to the rifle he had left on the ground of the living room and pointed it toward the approaching horde, which had now begun its charge.

She only got one shot off before her house was bathed in an intensely bright light.

* * *

Enforcer sat on his couch, his entire body cold with fright and his teeth chattering uncontrollably. With tears streaming down his face, he madly tore out the pages in a small, brown book with his mouth. In turn, he spat each one out into a garbage can at his hooves.

It had been four days since he was in the Horseshoe Office with the two grunts. Afterward, he had went directly home and, until now, had not once left his house. His jacket and tie lay in a wrinkled heap at his doorstep. Across his face were deep wrinkles, and the last bit of completely white hair in his mane had fallen out a day earlier. His eyes were deeply sunk into his skull, and his teeth were a dark yellow. His tail had become totally white; and, in addition to his dreadful pallor, it made him look like a ghost.

He had not reported to the lieutenant, or to the captain, or to the general, or to Princess Luna, or to Princess Celestia, since he had left the office. As far as he was concerned, nothing existed for him any longer.

“No!” he cried. “This can’t be so in my world! It’s a blatant contradiction, and it can’t possibly be true! Contradictions can’t be true! I won’t allow it!”

He tore out the last page of the book and tossed it with the rest into the garbage can.

By his side was a box of matches: he picked it up, removed a match with his mouth; and, after many failed attempts at igniting it against the rough fabric of his couch, the muscles of his neck becoming more stiff and painful every time he tried, he lit it and tossed it into the garbage can.

The match rolled around for a while until it found a dry part of the paper. It caught on fire, and the fire slowly crept up the rest of the pages. The fire, for the first time in his life, gave him no comfort. He did not even feel its warmth upon his body.

On his other side lay a coarse rope. He picked up the end of it that had been looped, and he pulled the loop taut with his mouth as hard as he could. He felt a tooth crack and fall out of his mouth, and he winced at the pain, but he kept pulling.

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Necronomicon, by Disce Cordis.

[Organized Chaos]